Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Weaponizing the Term “Conspiracy Theory”: Disinformation Agents and the CIA

‘Conspiracy theory’ is a term that strikes fear and anxiety in
the hearts of most every public figure, particularly journalists and
academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a disciplinary device
that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining certain events as off
limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the United States, raising
legitimate questions about dubious official narratives destined to
inform public opinion (and thereby public policy) is a major thought
crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche at all costs…CIA
Document 1035-960 played a definitive role in making the ‘conspiracy
theory’ term a weapon to be wielded against almost any individual or
group calling the government’s increasingly clandestine programs and
activities into question. – From CIA Document 1035-960 We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false. – William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s first CIA Director (from Casey’s first staff meeting, 1981)It is quite easy for a disinformation agent to spin a rich
disinformation tale and then craft several different versions of the
tale with new ‘facts’ to support the story in each one. These tales are
usually a good mix of verifiable facts and cleverly designed lies, so
that people who check the ‘facts’ tend to believe the lies that are
mixed in. -- from: http://www.wanttoknow.info/g/disinformation-agents

It wasn’t very many years after the world-wide web
became operational that it was contaminated by secret disinformation
agencies and also by individuals that were eventually called internet
trolls. Trolls (defined below) began interjecting themselves – uninvited
and unwanted – into otherwise useful and productive conversations
involving web-groups of like-minded individuals.

These trolls, intent on scurrilously confusing various
website commenters, seemed to delight in angering up certain online
groups. Typically, a lot of time and effort was wasted in such fake
arguments before members of the group finally realized that they had
been ambushed by a disinformation agent.

Many folks might recall how promising were the prospects
for the internet’s new method of communication that was affordable,
quick and paperless. Many envisioned an internet that was “without
commercial interruptions” and a way to promote healthy interactions
between well-meaning people of different races, religions, politics,
commitments, lifestyles and cultures.

Progressive-thinking folks without ulterior motives saw
the internet as a new way to explore and solve some of the common
threats to them or the planet. Peacemakers saw the internet as a tool
that could expose the ideological enemies of the exploited 99% and
perhaps even unite against the predatory elites in the ruling 1%. Some
saw opportunities to expose and then eliminate fascism, racism,
militarism, corporatism, bigotry, pollution, over-population and income
inequality (and, more recently, global climate change) and to foster
understanding and cooperation between various cultures.

Tragically, before you could say “corrupt crony
capitalism”, the web was dominated – and then essentially owned – by
profiteering corporations that saw world peace and cooperation as a
threat to their greedy profiteering goals. (Peace is never as profitable
as war or the rumors or war.)

In the viewpoint of amoral corporations, the internet
was seen as just another way to market their products to otherwise
inaccessible consumers, even if their infernal advertisements were
uninvited and unwanted by most internet users (albeit sometimes
entertaining) .

But, while Big Business and the investor classes took
over the internet, the web also became a recruitment tool for assorted
hate groups like white supremacists, religious bigots, racists and
neo-fascist talk show hosts who all developed a following and websites
that allowed them to spew their hate, bigotry and disinformation much
more efficiently.

Why and How Propaganda Works

The internet, like so much of what passes for
technological advancement in our commercialized society, has,
predictably, become a force for ill, not unlike how Joseph Goebbels and
the Nazi Party used the universally-accessible and very affordable radio
to spew their right-wing hate propaganda in the 1930s and 40s (after
first smashing the liberal media’s printing presses, of course).

But the ruling elites who own the trans-national
mega-corporations also own our legislative bodies and our major media.
That often nefarious Gang of Four has brain-washed their way into our
hearts, minds and bank accounts. Many of them can be seen eagerly pig
feeding at the trough of more than one government bureaucratic agency
that may be busily granting no-bid contracts behind closed doors.

These corporations, in the interest of unlimited (and
unsustainable) stock price growth, have been compelled by their
stakeholders to plunge head-long into the soul-destroying muck of the
dog-eat-dog-competition that exists in both business and political
spheres. The muck has become much less embarrassing – but no less odious
– since the democracy-destroying Citizen’s United Supreme Court
decision of 2011 that legalized the anonymous bribery of most political
candidates and made the fiction of corporate personhood the law of the
land.

As an example of how propaganda works, we need to
examine the CIA, America’s major national intelligence agency and
propaganda machine. The unofficial motto of the CIA, “Admit nothing,
deny everything and make counter-accusations.” was blurted out by Porter
Goss, GW Bush’s second CIA director in 2005. The official motto of
Britain’s CIA-equivalent MI6 is “Semper Occultus” (Always Secret) and,
according to the whistle-blowing, ex-Israeli Mossad agent Victor
Ostrovsky, the Mossad’s motivating motto has always been “By Way of
Deception, Thou Shalt Make War” (derived from a phrase from the book of
Proverbs).

Weaponizing the term “Conspiracy Theory”

But the fact (not just the theory) of widespread
official conspiracies (along with the obligatory disinformation and
cover-up operations) isn’t really new. As one prime example, the CIA
(which by law is forbidden to have anything to do with domestic affairs
[the FBI’s job]) has been a huge disinformation agency for as long as it
has been in existence.

The CIA institutionalized the term “conspiracy theory”
in its very successful attempt to derail the honest attempts to
investigate the roles of various governmental agencies and individuals
that were involved in the execution of President Kennedy in 1963. (See
the documentation of that assertion at the end of this column.)

Of course, all clandestine state-sponsored secret
service agencies (like the CIA, MI6 and the Mossad) routinely and
shamelessly make use of lies, secrecy, deception and false flag
operations in their daily affairs. It is a fact of life for such secret
agencies and it is all accomplished in the name of “national security”.

The CIA has admitted that it routinely “plants” stories
in the mainstream media. Those “press releases” contain disinformation
that influences the perceptions of the electorate and thus national
policy. See the evidence for that in the following video (and the
narrative that follows):

It is a certainty that the FBI, the NSA, the Pentagon,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House (not to mention most
corporations) do the same.

Secret intelligence agencies such as the CIA routinely
concoct conspiracies that involve spying, regime changes,
de-stabilization of governments, expansion of military bases and even
torture, disappearances, “suicides” and extrajudicial assassinations as a
matter of course. Of course, all leaked evidence of what are often
unethical, immoral or even criminal deeds must be denied.

On 9/11/01, for example, many investigative journalists
and alert citizens saw with their own eyes that the three WTC towers had
obviously been suddenly and unexpectedly brought down by controlled
demolitions. Their suspicions were affirmed by the multitude of video
and science-based evidence that abounds online. (Start your own
edification by listening to real experts who know the real science of controlled demolitions by clicking on: http://www.ae911truth.org/.)

If You See Something, Say Something (Unless it’s Conspiratorial)

We American citizens have been advised by our government
to “say something if we see something”, so those patriots who loved
their country enough to have a lover’s quarrel with it, kept pointing
out the improbability – indeed impossibility - of the Bush White
House’s conspiracy theory (that a group of Saudi Arabian nationals
conspired to fly two jets into two buildings, causing office fires that
rapidly burned down three concrete, massively steel-reinforced,
essentially non-flammable high-rise towers, with ach of the three
buildings successively collapsing into fine powder in less than 10
seconds). Unbelievable.

Bush failed in trying to silence those patriotic
observers from speaking out by holding a very unconvincing press
conference denigrating those who espoused “outlandish conspiracy
theories”. However, the mainstream media (including the New York Times,
which falsely claims to publish “all the news that’s fit to print”) got
thoroughly on board with the cover-up. Sadly, since then, anybody who
didn’t see what really happened on that day has been effectively
brain-washed to believe whatever the major media dis-informed them on,
and that includes most of the millennials who were either unaware or
unborn at the time of the deed!

Tragically, most of the distracted, deceived or too busy
Americans succumbed to the totally blacked-out propaganda efforts and
their in-bred need to be obedient to authority figures; and thus most
Americans were led to believe the deniers of the truth rather than the
powerful evidence of conspiracy.

One of the reasons that I am addressing this topic in
this column is the fact that recently there have been a number of
examples of disinformation in my local media about real conspiracies
about which I have enough expertise to be able to disprove the claims
that were made.

A recent letter to the editor in my local newspaper
regurgitated the disproven “conventional wisdom” that live virus,
mercury-containing or aluminum-containing vaccines are all safe and
effective, that they never cause neurological damage to infants and that
the infamously-smeared British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield’s
research on autism and vaccines was a fraud.

(For those uninformed or misinformed about the Big
Pharma-manufactured Wakefield pseudo-controversy: In 1998, the
once-prestigious British Lancet medical journal published Dr Wakefield’s
ground-breaking research that proved the connection between (the
British pharmaceutical company) GlaxoSmithKline’s live measles
virus-containing MMR vaccine and a disabling measles virus-caused
inflammatory enterocolitis disorder in a group of severely-regressed
autistic kids (each of whom had been developing normally until being
injected with the scheduled MMR vaccination). The validity of the study,
incidentally, has been replicated by other researchers, but the
pharmaceutical firm Glaxo cunningly executed a massive disinformation
campaign that resulted in the complicit British Medical Association
stripping Wakefield of his license to practice medicine!) For
documentation of the Wakefield smear campaign, go to a series of videos,
starting with this one:

Another recent article in my local newspaper falsely
claimed that the persistent aerosol spray that can occasionally be seen
coming from large, non-commercial jets are simply “contrails” that are
capable of making hazy the cloudless blue skies that the weatherman had
forecast the night before. (Contrails are an abbreviation of
“condensation trails” that can indeed represent frozen water vapor from
jet engine exhaust, but that only momentarily freezes at the extremely
cold temperatures at extremely high altitudes and then evaporates
rapidly.) The proven fact of the matter is that any jet plane trail that
lasts longer than a few seconds is actually a “chemtrail” that is
composed of metallic nanoparticles like aluminum, barium or strontium
that are sprayed, as part of secret governmental/military weather
modification experiments, but which persist in the air, potentially
cooling the earth slightly by reflecting the sun’s rays upward (watch www.geoengineeringwatch.org for the documentation).

Definitions to Help Understand Disinformation Agendas

Therefore, in an attempt to explore the interactions
between the pejorative term “conspiracy theory” and the prevalence of
“disinfo agents”, I include here some relevant definitions of terms,
obtained from easily accessible online sources:

Conspiracy theory: An
explanatory proposition that accuses two or more people, a group, or an
organization of having caused or covered up, through deliberate
collusion, an event or phenomenon of great social, political, or
economic impact. Such conspiracy theories are frequently proven to be
truthful when the bullying disinformation campaigns that try to silence
them are revealed as false, misleading, impossible and/or unscientific.

False flag operation: A covert
operation that is designed to deceive in such a way that the operation
appears as though it is being carried out by entities other than those
who actually planned and executed them. Usually there is an ulterior
motive, such as starting a war or invasion under false pretenses and
blaming the war on some other entity, such as the victim of the false
flag op.

Misinformation: False or inaccurate information.

Disinformation: False information that
is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government
organization or a corporate advertiser.

Troll: A supernatural creature of
Scandinavian folklore, whose ancestors were thought to have carried
massive stones into the countryside (although actually the result of
glaciers). Living in hills, mountains, caves, or under bridges, they are
stupid, large, brutish, hairy, long-nosed, and bug-eyed, and may also
have multiple heads or horns. Trolls love to eat people, especially
small children.

Internet troll: A person, usually operating under a pseudonym, who posts deliberately provocative messages to a newsgroup or message board
with the intention of provoking maximum disruption and argument. They
are often paid by nefarious sources but sometime are motivated to do so
for their own amusement. They often try to provoke dissension and doubt
by writing dis-informational letters to the editors of newspapers.

Another good definition of an internet troll:
A person who purposely and deliberately starts an online or media
argument in a manner which attacks others on a forum without in any way
listening to the arguments proposed by other commenters. He will often
use ad hominem attacks.

Internet shill: Someone who promotes something or
someone online for pay without divulging that they are associated with
the entity they shill for. Shills promote companies, products, public
figures and viewpoints for profit, while pretending to have no
motivation for doing so other than personal belief. Alternatively, they
sometimes denigrate someone or something, such as a political viewpoint
or a competitor’s product, that is in conflict with the entity they
serve. Shill jobs are telecommute positions or are conducted from
temporary offices which are frequently moved to avoid detection.

Conventional wisdom: opinions or
beliefs, often theoretical and even erroneous, that are held or accepted
by most people. Often such “wisdom” contradicts known facts. (Ex: “The
earth is flat” was at one time conventional wisdom for over 99% of the
population.)

Propaganda: Information of a biased or
misleading nature and used to promote or publicize a particular
political cause or point of view. Corporations call it advertising.

Clandestine/Covert: Referring to secrecy or concealment, especially for purposes of subversion or deception.

Hate group: A group whose members have
beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people.
They all have websites. (A few examples from the courageous Southern
Poverty Law Center are at: https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map:
Ku Klux Klan, White Nationalist, Racist Skinhead, Christian Identity,
Neo-Confederate, Holocaust Denial groups, Anti-LGBT groups,
Anti-Immigrant groups, Anti-Muslim groups, etc.

It is quite easy for a disinformation agent to spin a
rich disinformation tale and then craft several different versions of
the tale with new ‘facts’ to support the story in each one. These tales
are usually a good mix of verifiable facts and cleverly designed lies,
so that people who check the ‘facts’ tend to believe the lies that are
mixed in.

The disinformation agent has only to feed these versions
of his tale to several of the many conspiracy oriented websites out
there, and it’s all over the Internet – but not on reliable websites.
These same disinformation agents will use pseudonyms to join in on the
discussions generated by their “news” so that they can manipulate the
direction that comments take.

Below are excerpts from a short article that was published on the GlobalResearch.ca website on January 22, 2013:

CIA Document 1035-960 and Conspiracy Theory: the Foundation of a Weaponized Term

‘Conspiracy theory’ is a term that strikes fear and
anxiety in the hearts of most every public figure, particularly
journalists and academics. Since the 1960s the label has become a
disciplinary device that has been overwhelmingly effective in defining
certain events as off limits to inquiry or debate. Especially in the
United States, raising legitimate questions about dubious official
narratives destined to inform public opinion (and thereby public policy)
is a major thought crime that must be cauterized from the public psyche
at all costs.

…it was the Central Intelligence Agency that likely
played the greatest role in effectively ‘weaponizing’ the term. In the
groundswell of public skepticism about the Warren Commission’s findings
on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA sent a
detailed directive to all of its bureaus, titled ‘Countering Criticism
of the Warren Commission Report’.

The dispatch played a definitive role in making the
‘conspiracy theory’ term a weapon to be wielded against almost any
individual or group calling the government’s increasingly clandestine
programs and activities into question.

“This important memorandum and its broad implications
for American politics and public discourse are detailed in a forthcoming
book by Florida State University political scientist Lance
deHaven-Smith, titled Conspiracy Theory in America.Dr.
deHaven-Smith devised the State Crimes Against Democracy (SCAD) concept
to interpret and explain potential government complicity in events such
as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the major political assassinations of
the 1960s, and 9/11.

The agency was especially interested in maintaining the
CIA’s own image and role as it “contributed information to the [Warren]
investigation.

The memorandum lays out a detailed series of actions and
techniques for ‘countering and discrediting the claims of the so-called
conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims
in other countries’.

The agency also directed its members ‘[t]o employ
propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics.
Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this
purpose’.

CIA Document 1035-960 further delineates specific
techniques for countering ‘conspiratorial’ arguments centering on the
Warren Commission’s findings. Such responses and their coupling with the
pejorative label have been routinely wheeled out to this day in various
guises by corporate media outlets, commentators and political leaders
against those demanding truth and accountability about momentous public
events.

Today, more so than ever, news media personalities and
commentators occupy powerful positions for initiating propaganda
activities closely resembling those set out in 1035-960 against anyone
who might question state-sanctioned narratives of controversial and
poorly understood occurrences.

…the almost uniform public acceptance of official
accounts concerning unresolved events such as the Oklahoma City Murrah
Federal Building bombing, 9/11, and most recently the Sandy Hook
Elementary School massacre, is largely guaranteed.

The effect on academic and journalistic inquiry into
ambiguous and unexplained events that may in turn mobilize public
inquiry, debate and action has been dramatic and far-reaching. One need
only look to the rising police state and evisceration of civil liberties
and constitutional protections as evidence of how this set of subtle
and deceptive intimidation tactics has profoundly encumbered the
potential for future independent self-determination and civic
empowerment.

Dr Kohls
is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column
for the Reader, Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns
mostly deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism,
militarism, racism, malnutrition, psychiatric drugging, over-vaccination
regimens, Big Pharma and other movements that threaten the environment
or America’s health, democracy, civility and longevity. Many of his
columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn and at http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls.